


First Be Afraid

by wehavefound



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1, F/F, No Beta We Die Like Lesbians in a Blockbuster Film, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:35:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29299761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wehavefound/pseuds/wehavefound
Summary: The fear is a constant companion and yet there are times it moves from the general to the immediate. Times she can feel Death's scythe graze her so close it should have taken her by all rights. The vampire wars are a dangerous place after and yet she makes it somehow.Alice makes her glad she did.
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jessamine Hale
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Jalice Week - February 2021





	First Be Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> Or, 5 times Jess was afraid and the 1 time she didn't have to be.
> 
> I think the descriptions of injuries in this are mostly mild with one or two more intense ones. However I'm really not the best judge of these things so read with caution. The 1 scene at the end is not violent and so if you would like to skip to it I would advise skipping to the bottom notes and scrolling up.
> 
> Also, I definitely didn't beta this. A bitch is behind, okay. I'm also having a bit of trouble with ao3 eating my italics, so I apologize for any weirdness with that. I'm working on it.

Death, it seems, is an inevitable part of being undead. Funny how that works.

She’s not been long in this unlife and yet she’s already seen four vampires perish. Two in training exercises, two in battle. They said the battle was a smaller one, all things considered, and yet it had a terrifying intensity she had never imagined. A whirlwind of anger and rage and pain and grief and vampires atop her, around her at every moment.

She didn’t kill anyone in her first battle. Didn’t do much really, except for dodge and scream. One of the vampires who had died had explained it to her, told her that usually new changelings weren’t sent into battle until they were at least two months old or it was a complete waste. But all’s fair in love and war and so Jess is just shy of one month when she watched the kind vampire die, himself only 8 months old.

It was her second battle that she first moved past the general terror that was always present and the thought _I’m going to die here_ first sunk in. She had thought it before, sure, in moments of despair and yet somehow had never really comprehended it all the way.

__

I’m going to die here.

__

She had taken advantage of an enemy’s distraction to take one of his hands, hurl it far enough he would not be able to retrieve it readily. Unfortunately she had not thought through what came after that well enough and so when he dropped the half shredded husk of one of her soldiers at his feet and lunged for her she managed only to escape the brunt of the hit and not the entirety of it.

__

He barely clipped her knee, sending her sprawling to the loosely packed earth with such force that dirt from the crater of her impact rained over both of them, obscuring her vision for a brief moment. Long enough for his remaining hand to grab her thigh, to rip with an awful tearing sound as painful to her ears as to her leg. Her remaining stump flailed, venom leaking out of the jagged tear as she screamed high and desperate.

__

There was to be no aid, no calvary coming to the rescue. Her leg was gone, thrown clear across the clearing, and yet she could still feel it, feel the pine needles upon which it lay, the wind raw and jagged across the flesh that had never before been exposed to the air.

__

His hand, rough and huge and singular, was still on her, clutching her hip to drag her down towards her, crushing painfully in to maintain his grip. The pain—her own, and that of those being dismembered around her—was a tidal wave crashing over her and she could not think, could not escape. This was how it all ended she knew and yet the futility of it all did not stop a snarl low and fierce from ripping its way out of her chest.

__

She gave herself into her instincts then, throwing herself towards him instead of the pointless struggle away. There were no conscious thoughts in this place. None that she could hear at the time anyway, although later she would realize the principals that had been so drilled into her were echoing distant in her mind.

__

Aim for the arms. Watch the teeth. Don’t get pinned.

__

She manages to take his intact arm and from there the tide turns and Jess knows that she’s going to make it, that she will see this enemy burned and live to tell the tale.

__

It changes her then, to have come to close to her own end. She’s faster. Angrier. More focused. Still a brand new vampire and yet she progresses faster from that day forwards and thinks of the thin jagged scar round her thigh whenever her mind drifts.

__

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——————

__

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She’s older the next time she is pinned, just past her newborn year and finding herself expecting strength she no longer had. Her fighting style is changing, morphing in a strange way that she finds herself rather disoriented by. Growing pains, apparently. She cannot rely on her strength any more, cannot expect to overpower an enemy by force alone. They’re stronger than her as a rule and so she learns to use her gift more liberally, to use strategy beyond their blood blind minds.

__

Still, it is an odd feeling of off balance that comes with changing how you have fought your whole death and so there are sloppy mistakes and weaknesses that come in the adaptation period. Maria had warned her carefully of this, how those permitted to live past their first year oft die as the strength fades from their limbs.

__

She had known to be careful and yet it only takes one moment of a false step to find herself snared by an enemy newborn, his arms gripping painfully around one shoulder. She can only react so fast and so he catches his leg around her hip and sinks his teeth into the rounding of her shoulder girdle.

__

He’s positioned too oddly to take her head and she knows she should be grateful but as it is her entire arm is immobilized and as he draws his head back to spit chunks of flesh away from her she sees veins of venom spurting out of the largest tear.

__

She can’t kick him, can’t break his grip with only one arm of her own reaching around her own body and so she gives into a moment of desperate panic even as she collapses to the ground so that he is beneath her. She smashes the side of her own head into his when he leans forwards to finish the job on her shoulder and yet it stops him only momentarily, neither of their teeth able to take to the other’s head.

__

The realization comes then, that she is absolutely and truly fucked. She can’t break his grip and after he finishes chewing through her arm he can shift to take her head. The only way out is to sacrifice the arm herself to catch him off balance. Even as she thinks it she’s revolted at the thought of seeing her own twitching insides and yet she’s already moving, yanking up so that his teeth are driven through the last remaining connection, knee finally able to press down upon his pelvis from the change of angle.

__

His grasp falters.

__

The pain is enough to make the blood in her stomach slosh unpleasantly and yet it’s all she can do to to aim for his neck before he can gain the advantage once more. Still, she’s off balance from the missing limb that’s still in his grasp and so she misses the point on his jugular she was aiming for.

__

His teeth graze her own neck as she does so and the angry smarting line they draw across her throat is all the more painful for being the closet she’s come to losing her head in… in ever. 

__

She’s going to die to this fresh newborn because she forgot how much weaker she is than them, because she let him take her arm at the shoulder before she can even pin him.

__

It’s the worst she’s ever panicked in battle.

__

It was another fighter who saved her then, a younger girl who had turned only three months after her and who would be disposed of before the week was out for a fruitless attempt to run. The memory of her body taken out from underneath her stays burnt into her mind in each subsequent battle.

__

She had made only a small mistake and by all rights would have died for it, if not for the kindness of a young fighter who could have let her die and face no consequences for it.

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She makes no more missteps.

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__

——————

__

__

She is well into her career as Maria’s righthand, a mature vampire well used to training the newborns with an iron fist and liberal usage of her gift. It’s been a long time since she was the overwhelmed newborn who spent most of her first battle dodging and hiding. 

__

She’s powerful in her own right now. Lean and fierce and quick. A force of nature the enemy is right to fear.

__

She’s not afraid of Maria, not anymore. Not even with the rage she’s in now at their defeat. At the loss of territory Maria has held for decades, of places the shorter girl had fond memories of when they were home.

__

Maria was devastated and, as so often it did, this became anger. Anger that she would never be able to stop fighting if she wanted to exist in the place where she had lived both her lives. Anger that she was trapped in this stupid fucking cycle of violence and revenge with no way out that did not involve giving up.

__

She wasn’t enjoyable to be around when she was like this and yet her wrath usually was taken out upon the newborns, less commonly on the mature vampires she has allowed to live. Jess hasn’t been the target for she doesn’t know how long. Her gift is too valuable to the army, her battle strategy good enough that Maria vents her frustrations on the blood blind idiots who haven’t learned yet to make themselves scarce when she’s like this.

__

Jess is sitting cross legged on a rock, watching her flit back and forth with an unholy shrieking sound. There’s not many others right now—three other mature vampires, two new soldiers off somewhere. Hiding if they have any sense. It’s the smallest they’ve been in all the years Jess has been here and really Jess should have known better than to trust in her own protection when there is such a lack of canon fodder for her wrath to be appeased upon.

__

It’s the sort of foolish miscalculation that she thinks herself above, blind to her own mistakes. She’s strong now, and fast and smart. Jess doesn’t make dumb mistakes, not anymore.

__

Until she does.

__

She doesn’t see the signs that so often led to a recruit paying the price for proximity. The twitching of her fingers, the frantic nature of the pacing, the low constant growls rolling like waves from her chest.

__

There’s nothing to take their frustrations out on except each other, no satisfaction in kicking sand or shattering a rock instantly. It’s part of their nature, really, to use each other as stress balls. Everything is shitty and miserable and there is no sweet relief of sleep, no calm of working muscles to exhaustion. There is only the need to bite and rend and tear until the enormity of the universe’s cruelty does not sting.

__

Maria lunges on the back end of her pacing, shoving Jess roughly off the stone and cinching her arms tight behind her before the girl can react. She is pinned beneath her, teeth unable to reach, legs only thrashing helplessly in the sand.

__

Maria tears into her with an intense fury, jaws rending flesh from the bend of her neck as Jess screams. She had seen newborns disposed of in this manner a hundred times over, had felt their fear and pain and uncertainty as they wondered if they would die here or if they would be permitted to stumble free, patchwork their skin back together.

__

She’s pushing calm at Maria as best she can over the pain and writhing and some distant echoing part of her mind reminds her that she should have never let down her guard and she’s going to die here and—

__

And the calm sinks though and Maria’s mind is suddenly clear from the hurt loss pain. She pauses. Looks down. Lets go.

__

Jess lives.

__

__

——————

__

__

The battle is one of the last she will ever see, not that she’s aware of it at the time.

__

The Louisiana coven this time, their fighting style well matched against their own. The faces of the newborns change and yet the generals of both armies are the same, their teaching styles still relatively intact. The deciding factor, as it always is between them, is numbers.

__

Jess is on the battlefield herself, dodging around her own soldiers and enemies alike in an attempt to locate their general. He doesn’t come to the battles often and yet something in her knows. Jess is here. Their newborns are evenly numbered. He will be here somewhere, seeking out the girl so evenly paired against his own strengths.

__

She’s honestly not really sure that she can kill him, not with the stories she’s heard, and yet it is better, always better, to seek the enemy out instead of letting them find you first. She hasn’t seen him face to face yet. Better to get a sense of his mettle when she has backup anyway.

__

It doesn’t take long for her to find him. He’s short and stocky, a certain heaviness to his build that Jess knows signifies remarkable strength even in a mature vampire. He’s cutting apart one of her own methodically, severing each limb and throwing the pieces in opposite directions. Her soldier is held aloft by one meaty hand and even from yards away Jess can see that there’s really no hope left for her. She’s been split into too many pieces already, even despite her head staying intact so far.

__

Jess lets her power creep forwards first, blind panic reaching him before she allows herself to launch herself at him, leaping so that her legs will wrap around his hips and she will have his head before he even knows she’s there.

__

She makes no sound and yet he whips around while she’s still in midair, locked onto her course. The end result is that instead of a clean rip to the back of his neck while he’s incapacitated, she’s locked around him like a baby to mother and it’s his arms pinning her own.

__

He’s shorter than her, by enough to make a difference. His head fits beneath her own, protecting himself from losing his head. Her own throat is wide open and she can’t escape from his arms. He’s strong as a newborn, she’s sure of it.

__

He’s still blindly terrified, the fear made worse through their skin touching. The moments hesitation it gives her is all she needs to start tearing into the top of his head, biting chunks and pieces out. It’s not smooth or easy by any means, not nearly as neat as a clean decapitation.

__

She’s never actually tried to do this before but it probably works the same as beheading. She can’t get away anyway, can’t reach anything else. The second he gets ahold of his senses to think through the fear she’s going to die here.

__

In hindsight it was not the best idea to confront him this way.

__

She’s through his skull now, the top half of his scalp completely shredded into bits and pieces in the sand beneath them. The venom smarts against her lips and tongue. He’s starting to fight back now and yet surely he can’t keep going for long. She can’t reach much further with her teeth, restrained as she is still.

__

She needs a hand free and yet he’s still crushing her in his grip, his struggles growing stronger with each moment. If he takes out her throat it will all be over and so a frantic desperation takes over.

__

She watches herself as if as an outsider in abject horror. She has no other choice and yet every fiber of her being is disgusted with herself even as she does it.

__

She bites a rough chunk of his skull off from the side of the jagged bowl that she’s formed. She doesn’t spit it as she did the others.

__

Vampires, as a general rule, do not use many tools. Their goals are limited to brawls, blood, and bodies. If there’s something strong enough to stand up to vampire force Jess hasn’t seen it yet, and so the most effective tool for any of those three goals will always be their own flesh.

__

She’s not proud of what she does and yet the tool does as she wills it and his brain comes out in thick wet chunks that drip venom all over her as she shakes her head to dislodge them from her makeshift spoon. Apparently only most of a vampire is turned to stone.

__

His grip gets progressively weaker as she digs. It takes her a moment to come back to herself enough to realize when it’s loosened completely, a moment longer to come to terms with what she’s done.

__

When Peter asks her to leave the next day there is no hesitation.

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——————

__

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She loves it here in the north.

__

She’s missed Peter and here she can grow to know Charlotte as more than simply canon fodder. She’s a sweet girl, holds no grudges against her. 

__

Importantly, there are few vampires up here. They encounter others routinely, or at least their scent trails, and yet compared to the jam packed armies of the south it will always feel empty to Jess.

__

She can relax. 

__

She’s met plenty of nomads despite the relatively short time she’s been here. She still doesn’t particularly know what to make of their welcoming demeanor and easy happy smiles. They act strangely, leave easy openings in their guard. They’re kind.

__

It’s a little bit creepy.

__

Despite her reservation it’s still been years since she’s grappled with anyone other than her travel companions, years since she’s fought seriously.

__

It’s the only reason the nomad in front of her has gotten an advantage over her.

__

Peter and Charlotte are out to engage of physical pleasantries and so she is alone, hunting on the outskirts of a city. She had thought herself alone, hadn’t smelled him yet.

__

It’s been too long since she’s been in a real fight, longer since she’s been caught in one unawares. The surprise is bad and yet the loss of her sense of safety is infinitely worse. She had felt secure. Thought she could go hunting without worrying, without running the entire perimeter of the city to check for any other vampires present.

__

Foolish.

__

He had her arms pinned behind her in the first moment that she knew he was there. He’s determined, intense. She’s wearing long sleeves and there is a distinct lack of the fear that others normally have when they see her motley skin. He doesn’t know where she’s from, there’s no way.

__

He may not be afraid but she is. It’s a wave inside her, sending her floundering for solid ground. She had thought herself safe and yet she’s pinned here by a vampire she knows nothing about and she’s more terrified than she’s ever been before.

__

The fear used to be normal to her. It used to be all she felt mirrored back at her a dozen times over, the air she lived in. It’s a lot more jarring when she’s known what safety feels like. 

__

She loses herself in it and so she thrashes and snarls and kicks desperately in vain because she can’t die this way, she can’t have her unlife taken from her when she’s just learned how it feels to want it.

__

It feels like years before she comes back to herself and yet logically she knows it can’t have been more than a moment. He hasn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to kill her, even though he could have had her head from this angle. 

__

How strange, to pin an unknown vampire and then not kill them. Perhaps he just wants to talk. He’s not a particularly good fighter either she realizes. He’s left an opening for her in the form of his head conveniently right behind hers and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that she’s going to use it.

__

She slams her head into his face hard enough she can feel his head through the brick behind him and his grip loosens just enough for her to break free.

__

It’s over then.

__

He’s dismembered before he can even begin to speak and as she watches the thick purple smoke she can’t help but remember the way he waited for her to calm down before he tried to speak.

__

Perhaps he had just wanted to speak to her. Perhaps he had wanted to make sure she wouldn’t dart off without hearing what he had to say. Her scars were obscured and if her time in the north has taught her anything it’s that nomads are very strange people. They behave so oddly and it hurts to realize that he might have had only the best intentions.

__

She’s never felt bad for killing someone before, not like this.

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No matter how long she’s gone from the war it seems she can never truly escape.

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——————

__

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Emmett is chasing her, his bulk slowing him down enough that he’s always a moment behind. His whoops and shouts are loud enough that she’s sure they’re audible back at the house even despite their distance and she finds herself thankful once more for her brother and the simple easy joy he carries with him.

__

He had been foolish, to bet against Alice, and so he paid the price for it now, prized gameboy held gingerly in Jess’s hand as she ran. Never bet electronics you aren’t willing to loose should really be the first rule of the family. This was what, the fourth gameboy this winter alone?

__

As she ran his cheers died down abruptly, footsteps going quiet. Something was wrong and so she paused, cocking her head in anticipation of him barreling through the underbrush any moment now. A flash of excitement from above her was the only clue she got and yet it was just enough warning to spare her from Rosalie’s fall as the girl launched herself out of the tree she had been hiding in with a wild grin.

__

Dirty tricks indeed.

__

The distraction was enough for Emmett to tackle her, his shoulder digging into her stomach, rough arms wrapping around her neck to prevent her from slipping away. They slammed through the nearest tree until she catches her footing solid against the ground, taking a thick fistful of his curly hair to force him to concede or risk baldness for eternity.

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He lets go of her then, rocking back on his heels with a grin and an outstretched hand.

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Ugh. She hates admitting defeat and yet the joy it brings is intoxicating. She’s cornered well and truly and even she won’t try to pretend this was a victory. She rolls her eyes, gently tosses the little red console to him. 

__

She’ll just take it the next time he’s not looking. She’s promised Alice that this was war after all, and she couldn’t very well let her love down.

__

He in turn tosses it to Rosalie, wrapping his hands around her thigh and yanking before the gameboy is more than a second out of his hand. He’s playing, she knows, is continuing the wrestling match in good fun. He would never hurt her.

__

It doesn’t matter.

__

In a moment she’s back on the battlefield, smoke and screams filling the air around her and she’s terrified and everything is too much. She can’t get free and the scar burns as though she’s going to loose her leg once more and she can’t even breathe for the disorientation of the sudden fear.

__

And then Alice’s small hands are on her chest and she can’t even see but she can feel her familiar lips against her own.

__

It’s a feeling so intimately tied to her life now that it never fails to shock her out of a sudden flashback, to bring her back to the present. Emmett has retreated several paces away with Rosalie by his side, Alice is snugged under her arm beside her on the ground. She knows better, than to be on top of Jess, and the love that pulses from her is so powerful that she matches her breathing to the pulses of it.

__

They’re nowhere near the house, she realizes. Alice was sketching when she left—she came as soon as she saw what was to happen. It’s moments like these that she’s overwhelmed by the care she shows, by how well Alice knows her, by the tender attention she never fails to show for her needs.

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She thinks often that she is the one protecting Alice and yet it’s far more common that Alice is the one protecting her. From herself. From the little inconspicuous details that send her reeling inside a choking cloud of purple smoke without warning.

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How lucky she is to be held despite it all.

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She leans in for another kiss, more intimate than the last for the fact she was actually aware it was to happen. Emmett and Rosalie leave them quietly then and Jess knows that tonight there will be an apology from Emmett and, more importantly, a mental note. He cares for her too, enough to have a careful collection of moves he will never use in their frequent brawls.

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The atmosphere of adoration is so strong within her chest that it’s almost too much for her heart to hold and so she presses her hand to the back of Alice’s neck and pushes all the love she can possibly give to her.

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There is no place more beautiful than wherever Alice is and so she is content to simply lay with her in the powdery snow, letting the love wash over them both as she knows it will every day for the rest of their lives together.

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How lovely it is to be seen.

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**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what y'all think!


End file.
